Arrangment View Insert Marker and Mackie Control
Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2026 4:21 pm
Hello and sorry for the bad english.
As the title says, i'm unable to use a Mackie Control in Live, without mapping another hardware
(StreamDeck) to move constantly the Insert Marker to the playhead position.
I'm using a Beheringer X Touch Compact, i've bought a Launch Control XL3 but without motorized faders, i was loosing my mind with volumes.
So basically a Mackie Control can scrub the timeline, when you stop scrubbing and hit play, the playhead will start from that point.
If you hit stop two times, the playhead moves to the beginning, and with other buttons you can move the playhead between markers till the end.
It works like that in every software i've used: Premiere, Cubase, Reaper.
Ableton Arrangment is different: you have to use arrows to scrub the timeline and move this Insert Marker accordingly and not the common arrows that you find on a Mackie Control.
Why is there not the possibility to turn off this behaviour or at least "auto connect" the Insert Marker to the playhead?
If i want a marker, i set it. In this way you are forced to use three shortcuts to do one thing: Space bar, Shift+Space Bar, Ctrl+Space bar.
And this affect the midi editor too:
The XL 3 can't control anything in the midi editor.
I've tried in Cubase and It works as expected:
If you scrub, the playhead moves and starts from that point. If you go outside the range, the midi clip vanish.
In Live if you move the play head with a controller (Mackie or not) and you are in the Midi Editor, you won't see anything, expecially if you work with the Midi Editor in full screen.
It's really impossible to use the Arrangment View and Midi Editor together, without using Insert Markers or different shortcuts?
I have bought a lot of controllers, i have a Midi Fighter mapped with CSS, a stream deck, a Minilab 3, an APC 64, but every controller has its limitations.
A Mackie Control is universal and super useful when you do video editing like me.
Thank you and sorry for the long post and the terribile english
As the title says, i'm unable to use a Mackie Control in Live, without mapping another hardware
(StreamDeck) to move constantly the Insert Marker to the playhead position.
I'm using a Beheringer X Touch Compact, i've bought a Launch Control XL3 but without motorized faders, i was loosing my mind with volumes.
So basically a Mackie Control can scrub the timeline, when you stop scrubbing and hit play, the playhead will start from that point.
If you hit stop two times, the playhead moves to the beginning, and with other buttons you can move the playhead between markers till the end.
It works like that in every software i've used: Premiere, Cubase, Reaper.
Ableton Arrangment is different: you have to use arrows to scrub the timeline and move this Insert Marker accordingly and not the common arrows that you find on a Mackie Control.
Why is there not the possibility to turn off this behaviour or at least "auto connect" the Insert Marker to the playhead?
If i want a marker, i set it. In this way you are forced to use three shortcuts to do one thing: Space bar, Shift+Space Bar, Ctrl+Space bar.
And this affect the midi editor too:
The XL 3 can't control anything in the midi editor.
I've tried in Cubase and It works as expected:
If you scrub, the playhead moves and starts from that point. If you go outside the range, the midi clip vanish.
In Live if you move the play head with a controller (Mackie or not) and you are in the Midi Editor, you won't see anything, expecially if you work with the Midi Editor in full screen.
It's really impossible to use the Arrangment View and Midi Editor together, without using Insert Markers or different shortcuts?
I have bought a lot of controllers, i have a Midi Fighter mapped with CSS, a stream deck, a Minilab 3, an APC 64, but every controller has its limitations.
A Mackie Control is universal and super useful when you do video editing like me.
Thank you and sorry for the long post and the terribile english